Stents, stent delivery assemblies and other expandable medical devices are utilized in a number of medical procedures and situations, and as such their structure and function are well known. A stent is a generally cylindrical prosthesis introduced via a catheter into a lumen of a body vessel in a configuration having a generally reduced diameter and then expanded to the diameter of the vessel. In its expanded configuration, the stent supports and reinforces the vessel walls while maintaining the vessel in an open, unobstructed condition.
Stents are available in both self-expanding and inflation expandable configurations. Inflation expandable stents are well known and widely available in a variety of designs and configurations. Both self-expanding and inflation expandable stents may be crimped to their reduced configuration after being disposed about a delivery catheter. They are maneuvered to the deployment site and expanded to the vessel diameter either by fluid inflation of a balloon positioned between the stent and the delivery catheter, or upon release of the self-expanding stent from its crimped state, for example by retraction of a retaining sleeve.
Stents may be crimped or reduced in size by a suitable crimping device, for example as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/826,196; 10/788,088; 10/826,035; and US20030192164A1; and U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,629,350; and 6,360,577, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein in their entireties.
When a stent includes a coating, such as a polymer or a drug coating, it may be possible for a crimping device to undesirably affect the coating during crimping. Further, crimping devices may require cleaning after a crimping step as coating material residuals may be left in the crimping device.
There remains a need for a system and method of crimping a stent or other expandable medical device which provides added protection to the device being reduced in size. There remains a need for a system and method of crimping a stent or other expandable medical device which prevents contamination of the contacting surfaces of the crimping device.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.